In search of a European identity

A couple of new EU blogs – and introducing the Euroblog roundup

March 19, 2007by Nosemonkey

Don’t know how I hadn’t spotted this, but the Economist’s new EU-blog Certain Ideas of Europe (featuring the occasional contribution from blogging Economist journo Edward Lucas) has been going for a couple of months now, and is – as you’d probably expect from the Economist – really rather good.

There’s also a new CAP-centred blog, Câ‚¬ASâ‚¬ (the Campaign for the Eradication of Agricultural Subsidies in Europe), which only has two posts at the moment, but might be fun. (via).

(Oh, and in previous new EU blog roundups – one and two and the CIS version – I seem to have neglected to mention linklog Eurocat, which has some handy EU-related stuff knocking about.)

THE EUROBLOG ROUNDUP

In the spirit of (i.e. in a blatant attempt to rip off) the Britblog Roundup started by Tim Worstall a couple of years back now, I’ve been pondering a “Euroblog” version for a while.

This coming weekend, being the focus of the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome celebrations, seems as good a time as any to kick this off. Ideally we’d have a mushy “what binds us all together despite our differences” kind of theme, but meh… Too short notice for that, probably.

Even so, for the first one I’m hoping for 50 tip-top blog posts on aspects of European life – politics, culture, history, pro-EU, anti-EU, you name it (though racist/viciously xenophobic entries will likely be disregarded) – and “Europe” being whatever definition you prefer. I’m not restricting this entirely to the EU – CIS entries are also welcome. Hell – let’s say anything from or on a country that is (or was, in the case of the likes of Belarus) a member of the Council of Europe is eligible.

The only real qualifier, though, is that they have to be good: original, interesting, well-written, provocative. The point, as with the Britblog Roundup, is to show what quality there is out there – and to introduce us all to new European blogs that we may well have missed. They can be any European language you like (as long as in the covering email you explain what the post is about – in English – if it’s not in English to begin with) – though English or French of choice, as those are the two most people can read.

So – how about we give this a pop? Any submissions – your own or other people’s – send to EUroundup [at] gmail [dot] com by 10am (CET) this coming Sunday 25th March. I’ll whack the first one up here (and possibly also at The Sharpener, even though it’ll be in breach of our cross-posting rules there), and then perhaps we could turn this into one of those travelling carnival things, giving everyone a bit of extra traffic. What do you reckon?